OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 January 1943, Page 2

OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

— BURNS ANNIVERSARY (To the Editor.) Sir,-—Tonight as these brief lines are penned, St. Andrew Burns Club, Wellington, is celebrating the 183rd anniversary of the birth of their immortal bard in customary festive manner, and it might be permissible in this connection to quote the following lines addressed by Burns to Erskine of Mar at a time in British history not unlike those prevailing at the present: Does haughty Gaul invasion threat? Then let the louns beware, sir, There’s wooden walls upon our seas, And volunteers on shore, sir; The Nith shall rin to Corsincon And Criffel sink in Solway, Ere we permit a foreign foe On British ground to rally! O! let us not like snarling tykes,. In wrangling be divided, Till, slap, come in an unco loun, And wi’ a rung decide it. Be Britain still to Britain true, Amang ourselk united; ' For never but by British hands Maun British wrangs be righted! With Allan Cunningham’s year 1842 (third edition) copy of the “Life of Burns” before him, the writer might further be permitted to repeat the fact that Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759, in a clay cottage raised by his father on the banks of Doon, Kyle, County of Ayr, and died at Dumfries on July 21, 1796, greatly loved, as sadly mourned, and still remembered in every part of the inhabitable globe where men and women of his. noble race foregather.—l am,

etc., N.J.B, Masterton, January 25.